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0:14
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. This is an image that I made a black and white from the wildflower mountains. Really beautiful spot out Northeastern Oregon. It’s really one of my favorite spots in Oregon. But I probably said that about a lot of these photographs. And all of these places have been, this was a really special one I was here I think this is one of the furthest theories in the background that I’ve been in the allow mountains. And maybe for a lot of people that are more experienced with it, it wouldn’t seem like that far. But that’s one thing I really love about backpacking and about traveling outdoors and taking photographs is getting to a spot that’s really interesting. And then staying kind of local to that spot for a couple days, or three days, four days, something around 70 to 200 hours or so. And I’ve heard that from other photographers in the past as well the ones that have bigger careers than I do where they really want to stay there for about three days. And after that that familiarity familiarity that they get from their experience is what really allows them to communicate the story of what’s going on in that area, through their photographs in the most interesting way. So that I’ve heard about portfolio building in the past but I love that about this of getting the stay there and see the sunrise and sunset sunrise again, in the same location and kind of work it out and feel what the different moods of that environment look like during different times of the day. But I love how crisp and clean kind of the the mist the fog that’s coming up on top of the lake is it’s mirrored is really cool. It’s such a dramatic landscape always been one of my favorites.
1:51
You can see more of my work at Billy Newman photo comm you can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. I think you can look at Billy Newman under the authors section there and see some of the photo books on film on the desert, on surrealism on camping, and cool stuff over there. So last time I was on the podcast, I was talking about knives I was talking about pocket knives I was talking about steel is talking about different types of steel that you can use in your pocket knife, or that pocket knife makers use in the pocket knives that they sell you, I suppose is what I meant. And I kind of wanted to continue on with some of that stuff today. And then I don’t know maybe the other everyday carry kind of stuff that comes around that I’ve been thinking about a little bit too, but I was thinking about the couple knives that I have. So it’s kind of going deep into like, well there’s this dabish steel, there’s this type of steel and this doesn’t rust and this is hard and whatever that is, but I was gonna kind of jump in and just kind of go to the knives that I have. So I mentioned the Gerber Gator, I was gonna mention three knives. I think that’d be good. These are kind of the three that I’m into right now. But I was going to mention the Gerber Gator that’s that like three and a half inch blade, you can get that real inexpensive, it’s probably like 40 bucks tops at most places I picked mine up a biomart a couple years ago, it’s held up great the coating on it sort of a rubberized coating that’s held up great with the ozone stuff and they probably were out over a number of years, that’s really fine with me and it’s a sharp knife, it’s D two steel, it works really well for most of the stuff that I do, but in a lot of ways it’s kind of my cutting around knife. So I have in my my side pocket. When I’m doing some outdoor stuff, I can kind of carve on a tree, I can chop on some stuff, I can put a you know, like put an X in the tree when I’m marking my campsite or something like that’s fun, I can kind of chop up whatever if I need to I can open a box, I can do all those kinds of things. And I feel pretty good about its length and its use as durability in the outdoors. So that when I kind of carry on me when I’m doing a little bit more outdoorsy stuff, I’m actually kind of going out for a bit, but that’s sort of the end the pocket knife. And really when that extends it’s about eight inches, and it’s got like a pretty solid bit of grip to it. So it really feels like there’s something in your hand and it really feels like there’s a big thing in your pocket too. So that’s kind of why I only carry it around when I’m actually kind of stepping out into into doing some real camping stuff. But the thing that I have with me every day now is this little like two and a half inch or two and a quarter inch Spyderco knife. I really liked this one. There’s some smaller ones. There’s some bigger ones. They’re all kind of like a basic design. They’ve got sort of a, I guess it got a broad shaped blade. This one’s kind of that it’s a Scandi blade, I think it’s a flat grind. And then sporadic coaster to know for these big finger holes or you know like on the blade. There’s like this big circular hole that you kind of put your thumb into and use that to kind of whip out the blade as your your unfolding. This has got that locking back design as soon as that Gerber Gator too. I like that locking back folding design and then in addition to that I’ve got a really inexpensive phone Tang knife that he used for some of that baton and kind of whacking around stuff and data keep over in an ammo can that I have in my truck here when I’m out camping and stuff and maybe I’ll throw that onto a backpack clip on the side so that I have it there but that’s like a full thing. I think it’s a four inch blade with about a four inch handle for as usually as a little more than that but so it ends up being about nine inches or so. And it’s kind of based off the the the SA five p knife I think is what it would be you can look that one up cool knives I really liked those that’s actually when I want to get the future this is sort of like a Chinese knockoff version of that. So I kind of break out the prices and a little bit but but uh yeah, if you look up those nicer like the rat three I think it’s kind of pretty similar in style to that. But this one’s made by SEMA. Sema is a Chinese company I don’t know they even really exist as anything more than that but I found them online I found them on Amazon, they have a few different cheap knife options as it’s printed on the blade they use a higher end steel at least in comparison at its price point. So I think this way that I have is a seven car blade which is okay. But it was like $20 for this full tang knife and that’s really a lot with a micarta handle
6:24
and a she like a kydex sheath. So it’s a great knife to kind of keep on the side over here. I’ve been using it like when I was saying I go out on the shun trail picking days you know have like have a camera bag on my side. I’ve emptied the camera out of it and then I’ve got like a just like a little shopping bag like a little plastic sack in there. And then as I’m walking around in the forest and stuff, I’ve got that full thing nice I’ll pop that out as I find a Shawn trail I’ll cut the base of it and then throw it in my bag pop the knife back in and then kind of carry on so I’m using it for like a lot of like kind of basic harvesting stuff like that it’s just kind of been easy, easy side access and stuff for me while I’ve been kind of hunting around, he was forging stuff but really a lot of the time it stays in the car and it works really well and for that kind of knife and kind of for as often as I’ve been using it for some stuff it’s sort of like a cool camp knife to kind of like whittle on stuff you know that are you know, kind of like dig and whittle and stuff whack on stuff. That’s sort of the bushcrafting knife like last time I was talking about bushcraft and you know like petani through I want to insure it to interesting stick or something like that. Trying to make a What is it like a tent or a type hanger or like an A frame for a type or a frame for like boiling water and getting stuff ready for your fire or whatever is it mostly I just kind of use it to like backup smaller kindling sticks for firewood or feather sticks feather sticks are cool. I don’t really think that this bushcraft knife is really been sharpened for it I kind of like the Spyderco knife a little bit more for some of the smaller, smaller feathering stuff but but when you really have like a sharp blade, it makes it so much easier sharpening something I want to get into too. But for these feather sticks, it’s cool you get like a piece of kindling right like just kind of a long like foot long piece of dry wood that’s sort of an inch or half inch thick around maybe a little thicker than that.
8:11
And then what you do is it takes a lot of skill to kind of get used to but you do this, this kind of long and thin car like if you were like grading if you’re gonna like great just like a little fillet off of that one inch round stick and then you got all the way down to the end of the stick like the last like inch or centimeter and then you pulled up on your cut and then left that little last bit there. And when you get if you get it thin enough is that wood will kind of naturally curl up like a little piece of ribbon or something but it’ll kind of curl up and it’s going to be this dry, thin wisp of wood that’s sort of curled up at the end of your branch there and that holds them and then you repeat that cut another nice thin thin little paper thin carve of wood off down to the bottom down in the last centimeter leave it there and then you sort of work your way around the whole stick there and then you kind of work around again a layer up and as you do that, if you put enough time into it, it really does take a good bit of processing but if you do that you can make out in the woods you can make these feather sticks, which are kind of cool. A lot of the time you have the tools on you to build a fire or to build a heat source without going into this much labor to try and produce some sort of tool to facilitate this for you but it is cool to know about if you’re working in some conditions that are a little bit more difficult to get a fire gun but you get these these feather sticks set up you probably have to get a handful of them and then once you get your kindling set up, you can lay that you can get your your kindling or you can get just your your starter going. If you’re able to like use like one of those fire rods is Ferro rods, you’re able to strike that with your knife, throw the sparks down onto whatever you have is your fire starter if you can get that to the Kindle up into a flame. Then you put these feathers sticks right over it. Then you’re able to because you kind of cut those those filets down into it, the the air is able to get in between the cuts of the wood that are so thin there. And as it’s dry wood, it’ll catch fire quickly the SAP and little burn. And then it’ll really take off almost like it’s a piece of paper, but it has that sustaining quality of being a real piece of wood. So you get a flame, and you get some embers to start burning off of it. And that’s a good way to get a flame to build up quickly, then you’re able to also have the kind of thicker pieces of wood attached to it there. So you’re able to get kind of a stronger build of the kindling a little earlier on, it’s kind of a cool way to do it. But I think really, in a lot of ways, man, it’s a lot of preparatory work to get those, those pieces ready, if you’re trying to build a fire in sort of a mobile situation, you know, if you’re kind of setting up a base camp or setting up some, some sort of, you know, location where you’re going to be, you’re going to be and that’s what your stuff is, and for whatever reason, you didn’t bring any technical gear with you, that might be something that you run into to try and do. Or if you’re trying to set up a fire in conditions that are wet, or like a little bit damp, or in some way, you know, more challenging to get a fire going. I think these are these are kind of good ways to do that, if you’re stuck, but really the trick is to not get stuck. I think like that’s kind of the big thing of a lot of the wilderness stuff that I’ve learned is that was sort of man, it was a couple channels of it, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that you’d kind of think to worry about. As you know, like I need to start a fire and then there’s sort of a whole complicated series of things you can do to naturally start a fire. If you want to go down that route, good skills to have good things to learn about. There’s also sort of another route where you know about the modern world, you know about some of the tools you can get ahold of, and you can kind of cut down the time and the way and the expense or the expense on yourself that it takes the resources that you have to give up to get a fire going to get a thing going when you’re out in the woods and if you kind of traveling light and trying to travel fast and not really staying in the same locations a lot. It’s almost a greater expense of your energy and time to try and build a camp with wood and a knife every time you get somewhere than it is to just have a cup of pieces that you can bring in and then utilize quickly and then in a clean way you can kind of pull out you don’t really risk injury or risk any loss of time. And you get kind of a lot of the benefit out of it a one I guess are kind of particularly dropping into that would be like a jet boil, or specifically for fire starting stuff. I guess it’s kind of staying there. Jeb Bush is sort of one of the fancier ends of that. Really the most simple way is get cotton swabs and scoop up a bunch of petroleum jelly, you know like Vaseline, that kind of stuff. You can test this before you go out too but because some things are like a little different, but the petroleum jelly i think is supposed to light up pretty well so if you have a cotton ball, and a little petroleum jelly one, it’s a cosmetic so you can use that as like a lip balm if you go out which is that I’ve been wracked with before when I go out and kind of quickly changing drier or higher elevation or colder climates than the one my skin and pores we’re kind of used to before man I get burns and stuff in the cold. It’s weird how that can be or chaps you know, like chapped lips but lips that sort of stuff. But the Vaseline can help a lot for that but if you have like a little Ziploc bag and some Vaseline, cotton swabs and then just like a regular pocket lady, you can light those up as your Firestarter release without having to hunt down dry moss and bark on the south side of a tree out in the woods somewhere while you’re cold and trying to get a fire going. So you kind of pop one of these out. You hit that with your lighter or you hit that with your ferro rod if you don’t have a ladder but really I say bring the lighter you have the yeah the Flint with you if you need it, you got the butane you can have a ferro rod as a backup if you like it, but for a lot of the kind of lighter just a few day kind of things. It’s tricky man if you get a lighter that goes bad but I haven’t really heard of like hunters are kind of longer term 14 plus day outdoorsman. going out with things that are way different than even just like a regular big lighter. The Ferro rods are cool though they seem to help a lot but I think there’s some some cool stuff that you can do or there’s the reliability of a lighter that I’ve had for a long time is kind of always helped me out or been fine for a lot of stuff that I’ve done for the shorter periods of time that I’ve been out but yeah, you can hit that fire starter and then put that under some kindling so you can get a fire gun pretty easy. In a lot of ways, I haven’t really jumped into doing a lot of cold weather camping this year or cold weather kind of remote camping the man having a fire is great, but also sometimes not having a fire is sort of the way to go to like I’ve been talking about I’ve been using a like this portable propane heater with me a lot of the time and that’s a lot lighter and a lot cleaner for some of the more simple stuff that you want like a little fire a little heat source from like if I’m going fishing down at the Bank of a lake and this has kind of come up just like a week or so ago when I went out to a spot but but yeah efficient down on the side of a lake he wants some heat there something and it’s kind of nice to give you want to catch a fish throw a throw a casting skill down and like you know make it up there on the side of the bank but but if if you’re out and yeah, just kind of carrying that real light kind of two pound or three or four pound
15:25
little box down with you hooking the propane up to it and then yeah, boom, you got heater right there, you throw in your cast and you can kind of kind of manage temperatures that go down a lot more so it makes just kind of the simple things a lot more comfortable that sort of for the car camping based stuff, I wouldn’t really ever pack that out with me. But But even for when I pack it out, I sort of noticed that if I go with a lighter bit of stuff, it really ends up being okay, a lot of the time so sometimes it’s cool, especially at night to have the big fire and stuff but even for like a lot of the cooking stuff that I do or a lot of the midday stuff that I do if I’m taking a break, I really want to just pull out the Jetboil from my backpack, through the fuel canister on it filled out, catch up with water, make a tea and make a coffee or something like that or make a soup or whatever kind of kind of backpacking meal might be in there. That That kind of thing is or even just like as the Jetboil is like a source of heat is pretty cool. And then if you had the the dry wood and kindling sources around, you can use that as a as a fire starter tool too. But which has happened a couple times it’s kind of an off label use i don’t i don’t really recommend this stuff. But even just having a quick little jet boil, punch that on, get some water hot, heat up your hands and stuff and then kind of rely on your jackets and your waterproof gear to keep you warm through at least most of the daylight hours and stuff but that’s kind of kind of how I’ve tried to avoid some of that stuff. Yeah, the nice stuff. It’s been pretty cool. I like yeah working with that Gator. The spider co dragonflies kind of a smaller pocket knife every day and then yeah, that bigger Sema knife has been pretty cool been been digging that for some of the bigger kind of bushcraft and stuff that I got to do.
17:10
sharpeners sharpeners are pretty important I think sharpening also don’t sharpen very much and so that’s kind of one of the things is I’m sort of probably most notably a an irresponsible knife owner at least in the sense of trying to keep them sharp so I’m normally more likely to just buy a new $15 knife you know go from one night to the next night to the next step to the next knife as as I noticed that the blade on it goes dull you know like I buy that’s how it was for the longest time especially the kind of early on is you know, I kind of afford a cheaper knife that was cool. I thought at the time I didn’t really know much about it, but you know, hey, this is great, it’s a it’s a step up from my, my Victorinox that I used to carry around so this is cool, you know, easy folding blade knife or whatever it is I’ll use this and then by the time it gets dull or it gets kind of shaky in the handle or whatever it is they end up just kind of tossing a knife and I don’t even really ever worry about tooling the knife or sharpening the blade and the knife and really a lot of time it’s not been a quality of blade to really bother to invest that much into so in some parts, that’s my fault from the very beginning. But the thing I’m trying to do now more responsibly is even if it is like a less expensive knife train tool that knife to keep it in good shape, but also kind of select a knife that’s going to be a fine knife for a longer period of time. I don’t think they all have to be brilliant, you know, state of the art knives you know there’s like 30 or 40 year old buck knives that are made out of 316 steel that people have had around as their hunting knives forever. So I think that’s really cool and that’s really I think I was talking about a bit last time on the podcast I’ll bring it up again this time to a knife is really a cutting tool you know it’s supposed to be just like a sharp blade and so so it’s cool to kind of use that as just that tool and kind of work that that blade down to be a sharp piece for you when you’re out in the woods and stuff but for a lot of time. If it’s not like a specialized knife that I’m using for like something a little bit more specific that I’m trying to bring it in for and it’s just kind of my cutting around knife. It really ends up cutting on all that stuff which could be sticks or wood or it’s just sort of like a tool knife that I used to you know like cut fishing line or or wrap up rope or get something ready on the truck or get something rigged up on my backpacker or whatever it is you know so it’s kind of like a lot of occupancy and that puts a lot of like wear damage on the blade. And for as little as I’m saying I sharpen it. The blade is really often pretty dull. Like I don’t know if it’s really like practice to just do an easy slice through a lot of stuff. We were really like take advantage of that cutting edge on it so so yeah sharpening stuff is cool. There’s a couple brands that do sharp things out there you can get them in a lot of places. I think the one that I see often is Smith’s as a sharpener. They do a lot of kitchen stuff, they do a lot of pocket Mike’s knife stuff, you can get them a Walmart you can get them up by Mart, I’m pretty sure the one I prefer Though is the brand work sharp workshop you can find a lot of places to. They’re available online also and if you’re an Oregonian, I think it’s a company based at Ashland Oregon I had no idea until I was looking at the pamphlet and trying to figure out which pieces I should get but workshop they have a number of different sharpening tools and I guess the reason I kind of elevate them above the Smith stuff, at least for for some of the things that I’m kind of interested in their tools are just like similarly priced but like a little bit more robust on the on the work sharp side so specifically is this this electric belt sharpener that I’m looking at that sharpener has way more flexibility way more robustness way higher horsepower, just kind of machining to it the other Smith’s kind of knockout version of it is much more limited much thinner component pieces, kind of plastic component pieces. Nowhere near the same kind of quality or longevity would be expected in that as a tool. There’s other pieces sort of like oh, that’s like you know, that’s like a power tool sort of what you’re looking at there. Also in addition to that the workshop stuff has I guess it’s like a sharpening bench you would call it I think it’s like a field sharpener. I’m actually pretty interested in this but I think it’s a field sharpening pieces sort of like a little flat piece that you you bring with you in your your backpack or in your truck when you’re going out on a trip and you’d have in your camper, you’d have it with you and to sharpen up a knife and it really takes more time than I thought it did you know you kind of look at a quick video or something and you look at a guy kind of do a quick wax on a sharpener and then Nick Yeah, there you go. Cutting the hair off my arm in no time but really for a lot of this stuff after I’ve kind of been on a knife for a bit. It takes like a half hour to kind of work the two sides of a knife on a whetstone and grind it down with an electric sharpener man it’s like you know a past two passes or whatever it is to kind of re re angles that that grind immediately that if you just kind of rub in that blade against the stone it takes a long time to sort of work in the sharpness to it you know and really level up that knife to a higher level but but yeah, this workshop
22:06
sharpening bench is pretty cool it’s kind of a little little platform it’s got these angle guides on as you can put the knife on that angle and then cut across that flat surface and then kind of put the right angle grind in on your your cutting knife then on the side of it I think it has like ceramic alignment rod you guys seen those in your kitchen or something to you know you rent your kitchen knife or you seen a chef or something before they they get going on a piece of meat or their vegetables or whatever you see little chef video and they kind of run the chef knife across this this sort of solid rod they put down to the table Oh shrink, shrink, shrink shrink, and then they they align the blade by kind of coming in on the right cut and then the left cut of the blade from the I guess from the hilt is that by your the top of your hand there when you grab it but sort of from the hilt end to the point yeah. And then it kind of I guess it pushes the atoms it pushes the blade you know whatever little kind of microscopic warbles you’d have those little meanders that you’d have and what you’d want it to be a real straight fine aligned blade there I guess those kind of those kind of quick slices on that piece of steel they align that and then bring that into a sharper piece there’s also like a leather strap I’ve never gotten into leathers butter strap I should probably that’s sort of a part of that I really don’t understand yet. I was like working the leather strap I’ve seen people use their belts that sort of made the most sense to me if you have that around but really like as as the thing I’m going to bring out back with me I haven’t really brought that back out but but yeah you’re in the knife backside across the leather and that’s supposed to I guess do even more to sharpen it but at a point it’s like man it must be some sharp knife Have you seen the test like that you know when they put it up to their arm hair or you know like guys do that a lot I’ve seen chefs do that but they put it up to the hair and then they kind of do just a real light little just hardly whispering across the the hairs that stand up on the wrist and there’s a knife blade is easily able to just kind of cut right through that without a real hesitation or kind of bending it over and knocking it down and dragging it out. That’s supposed to be a sharp knife that’s like your your litmus test for it is almost razor sharp. That’s what it seems like you know, sharp enough to shave with it seems so I’ve seen people like work their axes down to that sharpness, right? You see people with an axe head and grind that down to such a sharp net that they can take, take that axe and cut the hairs off their wrist or I guess shave off their face with a hatchet. You know, that’s a little more. That’s a little more lumberjack that I’m willing to do. I’m kind of just hanging out trying to take some pictures trying to stay warm, trying to keep the heat going to keep a knife sharp. So kind of cool stuff. But yeah, thanks for talking about knives and sharpening.
24:59
You can check out More information at Billy Newman photo comm you can go to Billy Newman photo.com Ford slash support. If you want to help me out and participate in the value for value model that we’re running this podcast with. If you receive some value out of some of the stuff that I was talking about, you’re welcome to help me out and send some value my way through the portal at Billy Newman photo comm forward slash support, you can also find more information there about Patreon and the way that I use it if you’re interested. Or if you’re more comfortable using Patreon that’s patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo.
25:39
I’ve been working on a few photos, putting out a couple. And it’s been going okay. I don’t know I last week, I tried to put out a bunch of stuff, which was, which was good. That’s cool. I’ve been trying to go through like a bunch of the photographs that we had. There were leftover from our September trip. Hey, yeah. And I had a blast going on, like a big, big trip around Eastern Oregon and the backup to Eugene. And we got a bunch of photos from it. But I haven’t really been able to cut through most of them. Since we’ve gotten back.
26:06
You know, it’s really been true for me, too. Yeah, I’ve been busy. I’ve been editing other work photos, like wedding photos since we got back from that trip. So I know you’ve been working. It’s really in this last couple of weeks that I’ve finally barely lightly started getting into that editing.
26:25
I’m trying to do it when I’m at work, and yeah, pull up the files and I go through and I’ll edit a couple and I’ll probably try to edit a couple that’ll try and post. And that’s been a good way to go through it. Or I’m just kind of chipping at it. A little bit at a time. But it’s been pretty, pretty useful so far. But yeah, I think the first one was a follow up today. I put up an older photo as a Facebook ad. I think I’ll talk about that in a minute was the other one that I put up. I don’t even remember. I think I put a picture. Oh, I put up the picture of the alvord at sunrise that we were talking about and I think we put up the other day on the Facebook page. Hey, that was a cool one. I liked it. Yeah, I like this photo that we have for the billing name and photo podcast cover out in the alvord sunrise the cool day, like hanging out or we did a bunch of stuff on the onboard morning but it was so much colder this time. It was different it was only like a week later in the year than the you know time we’d gone Yeah, yeah, I mean I know that was early September and a mid September is really almost a different season. But man Yeah, it was a bit cold that day we had like a bunch of I think it was the day we left there was a lot of clouds up in the air. Up in the higher elevations you can see like a lot of texture in the clouds. And then you saw that dust storm kind of Yeah. Yeah, the center there it is cool. It’s really cool. Yeah, it’s strange how, how big it is out there. You know, you look out and there’s this big wall, a dust bowl and a grass. But you don’t realize that that’s just like miles away from you. And it goes on for miles of dust inside of that, but it’s just not where you are. And it’s so flat. You just see up to that. That change and whether that’s up there. It was really weird seeing that.
28:09
It was weird. Yeah, it was interesting driving around it and seeing Yeah, cuz you’re because your perception of like, where it is and how, what the size of it actually, is really it’s difficult to
28:20
Yeah, I thought it was just a weird thing. You think it’s closer than it is? Yeah. It’s very strange. Yeah, that’s cool, though. It’s cool drab enough to it. Then you’re just like, wow, this is like a whole big, foggy, thick weather system. You know, it’s very strange. It was just really weird and kind of surreal to like, see it? But it was cool. to spot that.
28:41
Yeah, it was interesting being out there a second time. Oh, yeah.
28:45
I dug it. I thought it was cool. We went to the fields store. Oh, yeah. So last time we were out there was 2014. And then and then there’s, you know, 2015, and then 2016. And now in 2017. We went back we went out to fields. And you can get like a milkshake and get a burger out there and get gas out there. I think you can get like a little motel stay out there if you want to. And it’s kind of near the border by Nevada before you get into the niaa. And it’s the nearest thing to get any resources outside of the alvord. And it was cool. When we went down there. I think we looked at the there’s this sort of post that they have for the years past and it shows like how many burgers they sold. And then and then like how many milkshakes they sold. And like, I think it was the 2013 it was like 5230 something like that it was kind of close to for the years before that. And 2014 it was about that. The year that we went and then the year after we went It was like 6200 it was like 1000 Gold jump or something. Yeah, and then it was like 6500 the next year so you’re like wow, I bumped up like so much there’s a 20% increase in traffic through the alvord area just since the time that we saw Are you coming here? Yeah, I really didn’t see that jumping in the period before.
30:03
No, no, it was really consistently. Like about that same number. Yeah, yeah,
30:08
it was like the 4000s or something like that. So hamburger sales. That’s my metric to the traffic through the outboard area. But it was interesting.
30:18
It was really interesting. Cool.
30:20
I was kind of surprised. Now think about it. I want a milkshake. And I want a cheeseburger master. I think we might have tried this podcast at Bain a few. I think we’ll do that. But But really, there really needs much 3d emotion. It was fun, though. Going out there to fields. Yeah, seeing that, but seeing kind of the influence of how much how many people are out there and alvord now Yeah, it seemed like there are way more campers out there. Oh my gosh, just kind of doing different projects and different kinds of things. Lots of photo projects.
30:57
Yeah, that was so interesting to see.
30:59
I was surprised to see that. Yeah. A couple models with little people assisting a little bounce cards and stuff, trying to throw some light onto them and little breezy. pieces of fabric.
31:11
Yeah. Yeah, it was cool. Seeing like a few other people set up out there for photoshoots.
31:16
Yeah, yeah. And a bunch of campers kind of put out, you know, on the on the farther perimeter. It seemed like there’s a lot of people that were kind of kept posted up out there. And it didn’t seem like there was any particularly big event or something going on. I
31:28
just know, I think that it’s just more well
31:31
traveled. Yeah. So our Instagram posts, we gotta say, yes, it’s
31:38
been
31:39
fun. Yeah. Yeah, it’s fun. It was so cool. Going out there the first time shoot. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was a blast. But it was kind of fun spotting that stuff and going out there second. That was really cool. We spent a couple days out there in the truck and attempt but yeah, windier cold air much
31:55
when you’re Oh my gosh. I yelled up the sand during the day. There was no way to avoid it. That’s a
32:03
little ply that stuff. Yeah, it was weird. Yeah. Just comes in up on the sleeping bags and stuff just kind of blown about. Yeah, it’s a really weird thing. How it comes together.
32:12
I must be what Burning Man is closer to the first time we were in the airport. It was not as windy. Anywhere dusty, definitely. But our stuff was much easier for me to clean.
32:23
Yeah. Before I remember that. Yeah, it was it was definitely easier. Way difficult. It was frustrating. But
32:30
it was. It was cool. Seeing a different kind of water system kind of moving through there having to be more stormy.
32:37
I did like that. Yeah. Heavier cloud. Yeah. I missed out on having a couple good sunsets. I
32:42
missed that. I was disappointed with a couple of the nights because there wasn’t a sunset. It was sort of strange almost disappeared was behind the cloud, which was behind the mountain. Yeah. Yeah. It just went to just gray. Gray right away. Yeah. But there wasn’t any color in the sky. It was really strange.
33:00
I was thinking that yeah, it was partly cloudy. I thought it was broken up enough that we get a couple of good sunsets or, you know, some some good textures as it was fading off. But yeah, we really missed most of it. And yeah, just definitely dropped to gray and blue pretty fast and wasn’t really quite what I was looking for. But some of the textures on that last day, they were kind of interesting, listening a little bit more stormy. And it was cool on that drive out. I think I had a couple of those posts. This last week on that day that we drove out on highway 78 to go to crane and then up into burns. And I think we pulled over a couple times I took a couple photos. But those are some others that I put up on Instagram. And pretty recently, I’ve been trying to do a bunch on Instagram, I’ve been trying to do a bunch of like, reaching out and direct messaging stuff. I’ve been trying to do like a little bit more networking stuff overall, too, which has been working a bit and I’ve been trying to work on my story too. Like the Instagram story. I think you’ve been noticing a little bit like I put up each of the posts that I put up in the day, I try and copy those in Instagram and then and then post them over into the story also. And then I’ve also been messing around with adding like your location to your story and tag to it. Which is something you can pull out from the filters, if you swipe up on the on the thing when you’re making it. And you can add a couple of things. But that like puts it into a location it tags it there. And I think if you do a search for stories, like there’s one that was put in, like Eugene, and there’s like a bunch of people that that hit it throughout the day, just because it was tagged with a location. So I’m going to try and do that more with some of the location stuff and use that a little bit more interestingly, to try and get people to see some of those posts.
34:35
That’s really cool. I didn’t know that was a feature I have I need to get into the Instagram story stuff.
34:40
There’s a lot you can think of Yeah, yeah, I don’t really understand it well enough either. But there’s a good bit of traction similar to like how Snapchat, you just kind of like keep watching the video keeps moving. I think it’s really visual. So I like a lot of that stuff. And you really get into see what people are doing in sort of a really late way, like what snapshots use for now and really what snapshot was part of what Instagram was, like years ago back in 2010 2011. When I first got on, it was it was really like a lightweight thing where you just take take a picture of anything was sort of you take, take a picture of your food, take a picture of a drink, take a picture, just some silly place that you’re at sort of thing, but it wasn’t really any kind of highfalutin level of professionalism or edited posts that would go up. There was just, you know, a square only, right, yeah, there’s only the really rough filters that you could apply from your cell phone photos. So yeah, I remember I remember those days that Instagram too, and it’s weird to kind of see how it’s progressed a little bit. But similarly, like the stories are a really lightweight way of just kind of showing anything that you’re doing or kind of expressing like the the moments of your life, like Snapchat, everybody’s kind of familiar, I guess, with the, the language of Snapchat nowadays. But it’s cool. There’s a lot of distribution on the Instagram stories. Like there’s, there’s a good bit of people that it shows do see a lot of the the content that you put up there. So that’s kind of fun to be messing around with. And yeah, I’m trying to like, take those little like snapshots. Yeah, like screenshots on my phone of the Instagram app showing like the the photo that I’m featuring on that day, and then I throw that in there. And I put the location and a hashtag or something with it. And that’s been a cool way to test some stuff out. And, yeah, I’m trying to mess around with that. But try to keep that for I think they kind of heard from marketing stuff that like you want to try and put in about six a day. Which seems like a lot. Yeah, it’s like a lot of stuff. But yeah, like every couple hours, you’re trying to get like some one or two second thing up. And that’s why I try and like kind of punch it up with a few of the photo posts or screenshots. So that those are like remarketed. And if I do like a podcast or something like that, I try to put up some kind of notifier in there. And then like a couple of posts to the photos and working on my day, the camera I’m using or something like that. We should do something of podcasts. Yeah, it would be cool. But yeah, thanks for sure. Do it like a bunch more podcasts?
36:55
I’m so happy to be doing it. Yeah, I really like being project smart audio stuff is really cool.
37:01
Audio is going to explode in the next year or two.
37:06
Yeah, you really write about it, it’s totally going
37:09
to be like, the thing of the future. old radio is gonna be the new future. So I think it was like really, the thing that’s gonna be like, taken off. And it’s what I’ve been thinking about for years, or you know, like audio podcasting. So it was cool.
37:22
Yeah, you really been on top of it. Oh, but
37:26
I need to be doing more stuff with it. You know, radio is a weird thing, like radio and like, and like college atheists. That’s really weird. Getting into podcasting is sort of a strange thing at the beginning, but just like getting in and doing it, you know, it feels like a strange thing. I don’t know if it’s felt like that for you a little bit.
37:41
It is really difficult to adjust to. You’re a really good speaker to begin with, I’d say and I’m not No. Thank you.
37:51
I appreciate you doing.
37:52
Thanks for doing it with me for a few years now. I should be a little bit better.
37:57
A lot better. And I remember like a couple of my first ones. It’s like a muscle that you build. I’ve heard other people talk about it that way. But speaking in a mic. You got to do it for like 100 hours. And then it’s like, you’re still bad, but you can kind of do it a little. It’s a weird thing. Yeah, I don’t. But that’s what I want to try. I’m still under 100 hours, right? So do another little short podcast. Yeah,
38:22
I think it’s gonna be great. I think it’s gonna be cool in the show every night.
38:26
No, it’ll be it’ll be great practice for us. And in 24 months, if we kind of keep doing podcast stuff, like we want to. Yeah, yeah, that’s really gonna develop into something that we’re proud of. Yeah. But yeah, I think we started doing this billion one photo when like in 2015. That’s when I first started setting up some microphones and like, this laptop is an audio podcast and thing. So it’s cool to have it go through a couple different iterations and sort of develop it and get to use the studio more and get to develop it more. I think it’s gonna be cool. Put up more stuff and using like this, on our website, on iTunes, and on YouTube, on Facebook.
39:02
Everywhere. Yeah, I
39:04
think it’s really cool. Thanks for being my producer.
39:06
Yeah, thanks for training me to be a podcast producer. I’m so excited. Yeah, I want to get into some sound clips with you later.
39:13
Oh, yeah. Let’s cut in. That’d be a cool idea. We should go for with that. This week. We should try to find some cool sound stuff and try and settle on some stuff.
39:22
Yeah. Next week this week. Pick some sounds ferocious.
39:25
Ooh. Yeah, we got to get fresh sounds. I want to do more. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m gonna do just a little bit body just a little production.
39:33
Yeah. I’m so excited about it. I really, I needed sleep. I like that part. So yeah.
39:38
I love it. Yeah, I like it. All the other podcasts that we hear with, you know, pre production elements to come in, you know, that makes it’s great. I dig it. So it’ll be fun for us to kind of do some of the same stuff with it. I think along with all the content that I’ve been putting up, like on Instagram, like the content that I’m putting up, we’ve been just now I’m starting to mess around with boosting posts. I was working with Facebook, and the Facebook page system and the advertising system. I think I’ve been learning a lot from that just in the last two weeks or so.
40:10
Yeah, I think it’s so cool and valuable that you’ve been getting into that.
40:15
Oh, yeah, I think it’s definitely super valuable. And it
40:17
seems like it’s really effective. It’s really effective, like,
40:21
for the day and date for the age that it is right now, for the attention that Facebook has, like for the population that Facebook has, using it constantly. Twitter, Twitter is not the deal. Facebook is facebook is great, every Grandma, every dad, everybody hits Facebook one time a day, or a couple of times a day, really, the data shows a lot of times. And so there’s just so many opportunities for an impression of your ad to be seen, or for your content to get promoted to the right audience. And there’s so many abilities for you to target people with the data that Facebook has. So you can really get down and find audiences that you couldn’t have before. Even just friends of friends, so everything, that’s a great audience for me to start with. But just being able to like put your put your stuff in there and get your content promoted to your entire audience. That’s a new thing. or not, well, it’s a new thing for me, I suppose. But it’s an because Facebook once allowed you to promote that much content to your entire social feed, you used to get a lot of engagement. But now because of the algorithm, it kind of tailors unpaid content back a lot, right? In the fee, if it’s not being shared attentive, it’s not super interesting. And then now to get it to get it higher ranked in the feed, then you know, you pay this $5 amount and you get you know, a value of that for your impressions that you buy. That’s cool. It’s a good advertising system for boosted posts. And there’s there’s other stuff that I’m not really sure about that I want to try and talk to more people about to put some of those pieces together of trying to understand some of the ideas around working like an advertising campaign. So there’s boosting posts, which is just the content that you would you would post regularly into your feed. I’m trying to do that with like, like portfolio level photographs that we have. Or just other other fun photo content that we can put up like the most successful one so far was one of the first ones I did have a cabin in the woods up in the wallowa Mountains beautiful spot beautiful little kabaneri up next to a really cool kind of Alpine looking mountain. And so I get why it was kind of an attractive photo to be advertised. But it was interesting. Yeah, like how effective it was, it was cool to kind of see how much of an audience it could get to if it was promoted a little bit. And it’s interesting too, if you put a good bit of money behind even a single post that really delivers it to a really large audience. And if that audience like appreciates what you’re doing, like you do get a drawback of people interacting with the content and people liking your page. And all of that kind of eventually turns into the value of a larger brand or a larger network. And there is like a lot of value in that that I think we can build maybe over the next 24 or 36 months. Yeah, well it’s still good it’s still gonna be a good deal you know, like Google AdWords now it’s not really as good as it was back in like 2002 1000 we should we should do Google AdWords, but like 2017 we should try and do a bunch in these Facebook advertisements, Facebook boosted posts. I’m really excited for it. I think it’s a good way that we could build a cool part of our content media photo business.
43:20
Yeah, I love it. I think it’s so cool being able to because this is something we talked about being the challenge of being able to actually find an audience Yeah. And it’s really cool being able to actually reach more people who would want to see our stuff
43:34
Yeah, there’s there’s some math to do on it but like paying for distribution is really worth it like absolutely it is cheaper. If you think about it for time, like say it would take 10 years to build an audience that would be an equivalent size that you can make some money on but like you would make a lot more money if you made that audience in two years and then worked that audience for eight years. That makes sense it’s like some kind of like compound math of how big something I don’t really understand it but maybe there’s a salesman talking about it. But it seems like it seems like the benefit of it would be now like working faster now and I’m really excited for I think it’s cool I’ve been trying out like a couple different ads and different promoted pieces and stuff and it’s kind of interesting figuring out like what works better where to target stuff. And I got to figure out more stuff about that but it’s definitely something just to research. I wish I knew more about it intuitive or you know, just like from the start but there’s definitely some stuff that we should try. I wish I could afford it is really the thing I want to try and put you know like $50 $100 behind like each of these more impressive posts are more than the things that seem to like catch on better with people Sure. Yeah, and I want to try to like put like a bunch behind it and then try and like get a better market demographic selected so that new people get to see some of this work or see some of these photographs. And then you know, like come on or you know, join or communicate. And then I also want to do some stuff like when we transition into selling more photo packages to like generating leads with Facebook advertisements, or generating like contacts. There’s an option to like, have people like schedule a meeting with you? Oh, right. All sorts of things, of calls to actions that you can you can use in in some of these advertisement systems. So there’s a lot of things that you could pay for, that you could probably really generate some business with, which is a cool thing.
45:20
Yeah, I think it’s really interesting to be getting into more. Yeah.
45:24
It’s interesting to get into it, for sure. And it’s fun, like, as a photographer, as people trying to do media stuff, just the, the different opportunities, just kind of some of the things you learn about
45:33
it. So yeah, I think it’s really cool. It’s really paying Facebook.
45:37
But it’s cool. I think, you know, getting average. It’s like it’s real.
45:43
Yeah, yeah. No, because it is Israel. I love that it works.
45:47
Yeah, we got to buy some marketing stuff. And it’s been coming together. I think it’s been really cool.
45:51
That’s cool. So you’re, you’ve been doing the Facebook ads, and you’ve also checked out the Instagram ads. But
45:58
I’ve been trying more Instagram ads. And it’s interesting with the Instagram ads, like I ran promotions, it’s interesting how it’s set up, because Facebook owns Instagram. So somebody that’s connected, I’ve been trying to do a bunch from the phone. The phone’s been great, and just trying to like develop more, more systems for that and how it worked. But you can do promotions just from Instagram, which works pretty well, if you’d like to do that. I think we started at $3. And it’s probably like a $5. CPM, I think it’s a cost per 1000, which is pretty similar to how it is on Facebook. But what I’ve been doing is using like the Facebook pages app, and the Facebook ads app that you can get for your iPhone. Yeah. And I’ve been trying to like manage the advertisements from those two apps. For both Facebook and Instagram, there’s a there’s an option where you can like simultaneously run this ad on Instagram, that you have just from just from your Facebook ads program. Yeah. And so when you’re creating an ad for your Facebook page, you can click just slide this lever over, it says, simultaneously run this ad on Instagram. And I think you know, it kind of picks the market and sends it out. And it seems like it’s a pretty effective way to do it. If Instagrams information about the demographics of the person that correct what I’ve noticed sometimes is that you put some money into it, and it doesn’t really seem quite as effective on Instagram, given the amount of attention that’s on Instagram. So there’s probably some tricks around advertising on Instagram. I think maybe it’s like a little bit more. I don’t know, I just don’t really have the keys to it, but it seems like just because they were separate social networks. It seems like Instagram maybe doesn’t know as much about a person. Like how old they are or like should they see the ad that I’m promoting to them? Yeah, seems like it gets a little a little wishy washy. Sometimes Facebook is really tight. And what that means is that your cost per impression is lower so it’s more effective for your money, I think is I think a little bit of what I’ve been understanding but I’m not really sure I’m just kind of experimented twice so I’ve tried to figure out some stuff around it but it’s been really cool kind of getting close to thanks a lot for checking out this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Hope you guys check out some stuff on Billy Newman photo.com few new things up there some stuff on the homepage, some good links to other other outbound sources, some links to books and links to some podcasts like this. A blog posts are pretty cool. Yeah, check it out at Billy numina photo.com. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode and the back end. Thank you Next